CESSA - Region 7 Committee Meeting Approved Minutes 02/20/2025

Community Emergency Services and Support Act (CESSA) Region 7 Advisory Committee

Meeting Minutes - February 20, 2025 - 9:00 - 10:30 AM via Zoom

Meeting Minutes - Approved by Members 03/27/2025

  • Call to Order/Introductions
    • Dr. Sharronne Ward (Co-Chair), called the meeting to order at 9:00 AM
    • Attendees: Dr. Sharronne Ward (Co-Chair), Sarah White, Bonnie Hassan, Chief Robert Kopeck, Anthony Marzano, Chief Marc Matton, Chief Mitchell Davis, Matthew Fishback, Alyssa Marrero, Manuel Gonzalez, Dr. Leodis Scott, Marianne Bithos, Kristi DeLaurentiis, Candace Gunby, Whitney Bunts, Jeffrey Carey, Douglas Jones, Kevin Bernard, Ryan Dillon, Joseph Thomas
    • Absences: Dr. Dave Mikolajczak (Chair)
    • Guests: Brenda Hampton, Joseph Thomas Jr, Athena Barnes, Eva Anderson, Kaprinta Marek
  • Open Meetings Act
    • Dr. Ward reviewed the Illinois Open Meetings Act.
  • Approval of Minutes
    • Dr. Sharronne Ward (Co-Chair) conducted the roll call, and it was noted that there was a quorum to approve the January 16, 2025, meeting minutes. Kevin Bernard moved to approve the minutes and Anthony Marzano seconded the motion.
  • State Updates - Brenda Hampton UIC HUB
    • Two weeks in and currently working on Priority Dispatch PSAPs and Mobile Crisis Response Teams (MCRT) are trained and ready for implementation, estimated mid to late March.
    • Reappointment letters have gone out to RAC members as a formality so that the state could get aligned with the OMA requirements.
    • Another UIC Crisis Hub Forum is planned to take place on June 11th, 2025. Additional information on the Forum will follow shortly. The Crisis Hub hopes to have a virtual option as well as face to face.
  • Supplemental State Updates - Pilot Project is moving forward. Unfortunately, there is not a pilot site in region 7. The pilot PSAPs include Rochelle Police Department in Lee County, three in Christian County, five in Salem County and six Coles, Moultrie. Eight PSAPs in Lyons Township area Community Communication Center and eight also in Cicero and nine in Elgin.
  • Meetings continue with the PSAPs and Centerstone, which is the 988 vendors for the pilot and with Mobile Crisis Response Teams involved in the pilot. PSAPs schedule bi-weekly meetings independent of Centerstone, which has their own MCRT meetings. The idea is to smooth out the rough edges of the program and optimize the learning curve. The three entities, PSAPs, are involved, 988 and the MCRTs have guidance documents defining their role.

Region 7 Update-Anthony Marzano - Will County has talked with Dr. Dave (Chair EMS) on their system's status and are currently reexamining why and if they should have their own home-grown medical orders. Mr. Marzano reports on current ownership of PowerPhone infrastructure and is looking to move in the direction of PowerPhone. Mr. Marzano further reported working with PowerPhone and Dr. Dave on the SMO piece, on how this would look for them indicates that a switchover to PowerPhone is in the works. Finally, Mr. Marzano reports on a willingness to participate in the pilot as a representative of Region 7.

Phase II - Brenda Hampton

There will be pilots running because all the PCs invariably will have to go through the process of readiness to transfer calls from 911 to 988. Consideration must be given to 988 other vendors for this. The selected pilot right now is just Centerstone. So, that'll probably be very timely with what we call phase two.

Please see the slide presentation for additional information

  • Sub-regional Committee - Dr. Sharronne Ward (Co-Chair)
    • The RAC is responsible for developing a subregional advisory committee, and this is a great idea that UIC crisis Hub to develop; in that it allows us to have other partners who normally are not sitting on this committee or who are appointed to provide input. The committee will determine what the needs are in our community and input based on what we would call, lived experience or people living and / or working in the community.

Please see the slide presentation for additional information

  • OMA updates and other training - Brenda Hampton
  • If you have taken the OMA required training based upon your work with another board or Commission, you do not have to repeat it for the rest. It will populate in Oneness. It will show that you have taken the training for that calendar year.

Please see the slide presentation for additional information

  • Discussion of RAC 7 Goals and Outcomes (if time permits)
  • RAC Survey - If you could please respond to this survey listed. Just these four questions. This allows you to have more input into what this advisory committee is doing, which way we're going.
  1. What are the reasonable metrics to measure the goals?
  2. What are strategies for this goal in FY 2025?
  3. What are the reasonable metrics to measure this goal?
  4. What are ways to understand if we're making progress and what can RAC membership and the Sub-regional Committee (which we'll discuss later) do to contribute to realizing these goals?
  • Public Safety Meeting - Kristi De Laurentiis - A Sub-regional Advisory Committee and essentially, we will be having a community meeting, where we will be inviting the folks in a region to attend the meeting.
  • Marrero, Alyssa - Identifying the ideal candidates from the community and then starting the first Sub-regional committee from that area is deemed ideal. The configuration included the EMS, PSAPs, Providers, and MCRTs So, the PSAPs would be involved.
  • Chief Kopec - Basically, we would house the MCRT, and they would basically be dispatched in response with us that may transcend the physical boundaries of Flossmoor, Illinois (but the adjacent communities that were kind of surrounded by were dispatched out of the Ecom dispatch center, which is 9 agencies at this point in time). The concept is to really reduce the response time for the MCRT, we see an average of about 30 minutes. From the first responders being on the scene to getting the MCRTs on the scene the main objective is to reduce the response time (get them enroute to the crisis sooner than later). In addition, we should serve as a tool for law enforcement to help assess that scene, and obviously we must take security and EMS into consideration. What we're looking to really do is to kind of treat the MCRT as the third branch of public safety. We'll have EMS, fire, law enforcement at the MCRT availability from the onset of the 911 call. We looked at utilizing our CAT system and even creating a unit for the MCRT. Officers throughout the entire dispatch center would see when it's available and request it. A lot of this is to just further engage the MCRT, put them in the building with us, have them respond with us, and reduce the overall response time from crisis to intervention.

Please see the slide presentation for additional information

  • Public and Committee Questions and Comments: None
  • Next Meeting Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025, via TEAMS (9:00am - 10:30am)
  • Adjournment - 10:30am Motioned by Matt Fishback and second by Kevin Bernard.